Wednesday, April 07, 2004
A break for 20% doesn't mean a kick in the teeth for a different 20%
From today's 'Brash Report' Don dedicates the entire issue to trying to calm those in the top tax bracket who may fear that they have been forgotten. Regular readers of My Right will know that simplistic rantings on tax policy really don't go down well in these parts. No Right Turn found this out and had the good sense not to respond.
Every noticed how a reduction in the top rate is a 'tax cut', reducing the lower rates is 'relief'? What the Doc has finally put into a simple sentence is that a growing economy (that Labour currently boast about), and a disciplined public sector (which Labour shafts buy requiring them to buy them another term) can combine to enable reductions in tax rates across the board. Get it right and this can be close to a perpetual cycle where tax rates can reach the lowest possible sustainable level. Read this, he says it better:
National is committed to reducing personal income tax rates, and committed to a flattening of the tax structure. The current high rates at relatively low levels of income are a nonsense and must be reduced. Talented Kiwis will not put up with mediocre aspirations, and are not indifferent to the levels of taxation they face. They want to live in a dynamic market economy, not one strangled by an interfering government.I could list a plethora of rhetoric from the Left about robbing Poor Peter to pay Rich Paul, and maybe will do soon - in the meantime NRT et al, please accept it doesn't have to be that way.
(later) Reducing tax rates over time does not require a government to slash spending, what is required is that the growth rate of government spending is kept a little below the growth rate of the economy. That requires discipline.
National will provide that discipline, and deliver a sustained reduction of tax rates over the longer term, as an essential part of a strategy to boost the incomes of all New Zealanders, and make New Zealand a place where we, our children and grandchildren, will choose to live and work.
